


pointless numbers

by demonsorceress



Series: drabble meme [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/F, Ficlet, Online Dating, prompt: 67 percent, writing meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-30
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-27 14:07:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2695829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demonsorceress/pseuds/demonsorceress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jemma misses the point of an online dating website, but succeeds anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pointless numbers

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: 67%, sent by ellizabethkeen.  
> Thank you Alessandra for the inspiration for this.

 

"They're all idiots. This one said he likes smart girls better than pretty girls, but I am both. How pretentious!"

Jemma has her back turned to Fitz, but she can guess he’s rolling his eyes behind her.

Two weeks ago, he convinced Jemma to create a profile on this online dating website, and only now she logged into it again to see how the experiment went.

There are 8 messages total, and at first Jemma thought that was flattering. And then she saw the messages.

She lets Fitz read the first four messages displayed on the screen of her laptop.

“Alright, these men are pathetic,” Fitz says with a sigh. “What about the rest?”

Jemma hesitates. This is going to be interesting, to say the least.

She scrolls the page to display the last four messages—three more guys and one girl. After going through the first, unnecessarily long message, Fitz reads the second and immediately points a finger at it. Jemma saw that coming a mile away; the guy is totally Fitz’s type. She should’ve made him create a profile as well.

“Hey, this one isn’t so bad,” he says. “He seems nice, Jemma.”

“He does, but by the time I got to this I had already lost all faith in the males on this website,” Jemma counters. “This girl, on the other hand…”

She waits for him to read the message, and accurately predicts his reaction.

“You have got to be kidding me,” he blurts out, glaring at her with an incredulous look. She gives him a sheepish smirk. “ _This_ is the message you liked the most?”

Fitz reads the message out loud, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

> “ _A neutron walks into a bar and asks how much for a beer. The bartender replies, ‘For you, no charge’._ ”

That’s the entire content of the message. No introduction, not a word except for the joke, nothing else.

He shoots Jemma another glare, like he’s daring her to laugh at the terrible joke.

Jemma snorts. She can’t believe it herself. She’s way ahead of him, though; Fitz is going to like the girl’s profile even more than the message itself.

“Is she really _so_ cute that you were interested even though her whole message consists of an awful chemistry joke?”

Jemma doesn’t answer—though her expression is more of a “yes” than a “no”—so he takes mouse and clicks on the picture to go to the girl’s profile.

There are a few other pictures, which Jemma has seen already, but her profile picture is just beautiful. It’s a spontaneous photo—she’s holding a blue-ish drink and laughing, not looking at the camera. She has lovely bangs, the tips of her hair are a lighter tone than the brown color of the rest, and she looks pretty in a blue flannel shirt.

“Fine, she’s cute,” Fitz admits when he sees the picture. And then he sees what’s right next to the picture. “What- Did you even see this?” He points at the match percentages on her profile. Jemma just nods. “Bloody hell, Jemma, she’s a 67% Enemy!”

She waves him off. “That’s irrelevant.”

“Actually, that’s one of the most important parts of the website,” he argues. “Are you aware of what these percentages mean?”

“Yes, I’m not an idiot.”

“Then please enlighten me as to what drew you to a girl who’s an 8% Match, 12% Friend and _67% Enemy_.”

Jemma tries to come up with an answer. And fails. “Listen, if you made me join an online dating website so that you could mock me for the people I-”

“I’m not mocking you, I swear, I’m simply curious,” he says defensively. “ _This_ ,” he gestures to the match percentages. “It means you two barely have anything in common. In fact, you disagreed on _most_ of the match questions!”

“I believe it could be interesting to get to know someone whom I have little in common with, seeing as she seems like a nice girl, and we’d certainly have a lot to talk about.” Jemma tries her best to make her explanation sound hypothetical and vague.

Fitz throws his head back and sighs dramatically. “The whole point of this website is to help you find people who share your interests and personality aspects.”

Jemma shrugs. She couldn’t care less about what the bloody point of the website is.

“I don’t think those numbers are enough to determine whether me and Skye could maybe get along well.”

Fitz suddenly narrows his eyes, staring at her like an agent interrogating a suspect. Jemma tries to understand what led to his suspicion out of the blue, but he soon answers her doubts.

“ _Skye_ ,” he says. Pressing Ctrl + F on the keyboard of Jemma’s laptop, he types that name into the search box that appears on the right top corner of the browser. A red number zero tells them there are no results on the page. It hits Jemma that she just gave herself away. “The profile doesn’t have her name at all, Jemma.”

She crinkles her nose and blinks slowly, considering the best way to give him the news. She was going to tell him the truth at some point anyway.

“Is there _anything_ you want to tell me?” He asks, acutely aware that she’s hiding something from him.

Jemma can’t help the smirk on her lips, which makes Fitz even more impatient.

Like ripping off a band-aid, she quickly spits out the truth. “We’re going out Friday night.”

Fitz widens his eyes. “ _What the-_ ”

“I saw her message earlier this week and answered it.” Jemma decides to just tell him everything at once, leaving no pauses for him to stick his nose into. “I asked her why she’d contacted me if we’re far from a match. What I just told you, about getting to know someone different than me? It was her response, and she had a good point. We’ve been chatting since, and yesterday she asked me out.”

She closes the lid of her laptop and slides out of her chair, guessing that running awkwardly into her bedroom and leaving a startled Fitz alone in the living room is a better choice than letting him see her satisfaction with the apparent success of her very first attempt at online dating.

She and Skye have been hitting it off pretty well since they started chatting almost a week ago, thank you very much. Jemma has little to no doubts that their date is going to be great.

As she walks away, laptop in hand, gleeful grin on her face, Fitz yells after her, “You’re welcome!”


End file.
